The Color of the Rainbow (Story) (Patreon)

I wrote this story last year, when I first heard that Straight Pride was a thing. Like the protagonist, I was angry about this form of culture jamming. Being LGBTQ+ can be hard, and I want to be proud of who I am. Yet sometimes I feel society in general just want to but us all back in the closet. 

A lot has happened in the last year about this topic, and there apparently will be a Straight Pride  event in Boston later this year. There is even now a flag for Straight Pride, something I was unaware of when I conceived of this story.  With all of this news, I knew then that I couldn't let this story sit around unseen.

“Did you want to speak before the meeting ends, John?”

I sink down into my seat as all the eyes in the room turn toward me. The group lead, a perky red fox named Clarissa smiles warmly at me. She must be the friendliest lesbian I’ve ever met. Her worn jeans, flannel shirt, and sweater vest gives off a warm glow. I appreciate the ease she’s trying to put me at, but it isn’t helping. I’m still scared out of my mind. She’s waited all night for me to take my turn, and this is her nudge to get me to speak.

All I can do is hold my long, thick tail in my lap, ears flipped backwards. The image of the nurse drawing my blood into the syringe comes back into my mind. The secret that red liquid contained changed my life forever. As a snow leopard, I often find most public places uncomfortably warm, but I feel like I’m roasting over a grill in my thick rosetted fur right now.

“You don't have to if you don't want to, but it would let everyone get to know you better.”

I’m told this will help, if I can open up. Slowly I stand up. “Hi, my name is John,” I manage to get out.

“Hi John,” they all say to me. Each of them looks up at me, waiting.  They are all like me, except for Clarissa, scared and afraid of what has happened to them. Clarissa’s pain is different than ours, but she’s no stranger to this; she watched her father suffer and die from this.

“My name is John, and,” I gulp, “...and I am living with HIV.”

“We understand, John,” says a tiger named Doug. He is trying to be supportive. The words feel empty to me, but I can't blame him for that. I am angry. Angry at what has happened. Angry to be here. Angry at myself. They are trying not to stare at me or intimidate me, but I can see their questioning on their faces. How did it happen? When did it happen? Why have I came to their meeting tonight?

The question of why, I am sure many of them can guess from my bandaged left arm. I just stay standing, unsure what to do now.

“Is there anything else you want to add, John?” Clarissa asks softly.

“I tried to commit suicide last week,” I respond, and then feeling stupid, I quickly sit down.

“We’ve all struggled with those feelings ourselves, John,” say Stephanie, a tigress and the only other girl in the group.

“That's right,” adds Clarissa. “It takes time to learn to cope. It's a growing process”

“Yes,” responds a number of the others. I just look at my feet. I shouldn't have come.

“Many of us,” Doug says, speaking up, “have tried suicide before we were strong enough to keep living.”

“I guess,” I mumble.

“I'm serious,” says the tiger. “I had to have my stomach pumped from an overdose once.”

Once? I turn that over in my mind. This had been my third time, but I can’t bring myself to say that. Clarissa waits to see if I want to add anything else, but that’s all I can find the strength to say. When I don’t, she steers the meeting toward steps we can take this week before next Monday’s group session. I just listen and try to remember what I should work on. I’m still not sure I want to be a part of this.

After the meeting, Clarissa comes up to me and tells me how brave I am. Not everyone is able to get up and speak their first time she says. A few others linger, including Doug. He is the type of cute hunk I would have tried to sleep with before. Briefly, a flash of my old self comes back to me, and the image of what hooking up with him would be like pops into my mind. Those fantasies have always been hot, but now they turn dark. Before I let it, I push it out of mind. I thank Clarissa for her moderation, and quietly wander my way out of the room.

The meeting was up in the third floor of the student union. Not everyone who comes is a student, but most are college students or recent graduates. One of the group members is a young professor who Clarissa says it took three meetings before he’d say more than a few words beyond hello. He’s now one of the most talkative people in the group. I guess I did okay for my first time.

I have school work I need to still do tonight, but I linger down on the first floor of the union. It’s getting late, so the food court is already looking pretty empty. Down a hallway, I find a bench built into a large window to occupy. Pressing my body up against the cold glass, I feel a little more at ease.

Winter has always been my favorite time of year, and the snow covering the campus green is beautiful. It reminds me of my childhood, when my folks took me skiing, or when I'd go sledding. Snow is my natural element, but it doesn’t feel welcoming to me anymore. Nothing does. I feel so broken now. I hate that I can’t put myself together, and it’s been driving me mad.

But that’s what therapy is supposed to help me do, put myself back together. It’s supposed to let me fix me, by showing me that I’m not alone. That others are going through this just like me. The others are able to get over it, so I should be able too.

I slam my hand against the window and feel my whole-body tense as I sob. The sound of claws scraping across glass reaches my ears, and I freeze.

I pull back my hand and look at the window. Wet drops of tears and some scratches now mar the glass. Maybe I should just go back to the dorm and work on my paper. I’m not sure how far I’ll get, but it at least might keep my mind occupied and away from some of my darker thoughts. My GPA fell this fall, after I tested positive last spring, but it isn't that bad yet. I was even doing better this semester before my latest incident, so that is one thing I haven't screwed up yet about myself.

I get up, pulling the light coat tight around myself, hoping no one saw what I just did. I can’t let those thoughts catch up with me like this. Walking down the hallway, I pass old flyers on a bulletin board, some so old they’re for Christmas events, lingering around campus because no one has bothered to take them down. February, even though it is the shortest month of the year, can feel like a slow-moving thing, and the out of date posters show how little is going on. Spring is still a distant hope, just like a permanent cure for my disease.

Along the row, there is a new one that looks fresh. At first, I read it without realizing what it is before I stop and stare at it. The simple font on white paper proudly declares a straight pride event in an unadorned font this Friday at a local restaurant.

Wait, straight pride? Straight pride! What?

“This can’t be real,” I mumble outload. Wanting rights and a little respect can’t be so uppity that someone is going to rip off one of the oldest forms of gay self-affirmation in existence, is it? The poster staring back at me suggests someone did decide just that. I have heard of these types of events before, but here? We have one day a year to be ourselves, one day to be proud, but that simple form of expression is too much for some people?

I reach up and rip the sign down. I don’t even bother seeing if anyone is watching. In anger I rip it up and throw it into the nearest trash can before stalking off. My life should not be some political football. Sure, we’ve made progress, a lot of progress, but we’re still only protected by a patchwork of laws and court decisions nationwide. Sometimes I feel like people just want us to go away as a group now that they’ve made an effort. Others think even that is too much, and that I’m an abomination in the eyes of god.

I’m outside in the cold before I can think better of it, stomping down the sidewalk fuming. Finally, when, the subzero temperatures shock me hard enough that I stop seeing red, I pause to take a deep breath. Wind blows across the ground trying to cut into my think fur as wisps of snow float through the pools of light cast from the lampposts around the campus green.

Why can’t people just see me as a person? I know I’m different, but I’m still a person.

The pain in my hands comes to me slowly and I look down. I’ve accidently extended my claws, and they’ve dug into the paw pads on my hand. One claw has punctured my pad, staining it red. I study the wound. For the last six months the virus has been undetachable in my blood stream, but if I stop taking my antivirals is could come back.

I gently make a fist to put pressure on the wound. Even though my blood is safe, I’m not taking any chances.

* * *

My laptop screen — and the blank window on it — stare back at me. I’m supposed to be writing a report for my ethics class. An orange notebook lies open with various other sheets of paper scattered all over my desk. I should be working right now, but all I want to do is throw up. The ramen I made for dinner isn’t sitting well on my stomach.

“Are you going to stay up much longer?” my roommate Ali asks me, from the top bunk.

“Huh?”

“Are you staying up any longer? You seem to have stopped working.”

“Yeah, I want to get this done.”

“Okay, but are you doing it tonight?” the fennec asks me.

I could do this later, but I wanted it to be done before tomorrow’s Pride Student Union meeting. “Yeah…”

Ali chuckles. “You haven’t typed anything in half an hour.”

Sometimes I hate how perceptive the fennec is. “I’m thinking on it.”

He doesn’t say anything and snuggles back under his blankets. He’s not the ideal roommate for me; we both have different ideas on what a good temperature for our room in winter is, but we both signed up to stay together in the dorm for sophomore year, and now we’re on our junior year. It has worked out better than I thought it would.

“Ali, do you ever feel out of place here?”

“All the time. It’s way too humid in the summer and cold in the winter for my taste.”

“Yeah, but you came to the States for school.”

“And every winter, I think about how I could be sinking my paws into warm sand instead of cold snow. Alas, this opportunity was too good to pass up.”

“You miss the Sahara?”

“Every day.”

“And your family?”

“I was skyping with them while you were at your meeting. Mom asked me how you are doing, and if you’ve found a girlfriend yet.”

“You still haven’t told them?”

He shrugs, or as best as a mound of blankets can shrug. “Why should I? They’d push me to change rooms if I did.”

“Yeah, but…” I point to a brightly colored poster of a half-naked warrior on the back of our door. A wolf, he stands proud, sword in hand, packing an obvious bulge.

“My desk doesn’t face the door. There is a reason I told you to keep that there.”

“Does living with me bother you?”

The fennec props himself up. “What is this, twenty questions night?”

“No.”

“Then go to bed,” he says lying back down. “I’m freezing in here.”

I know under the covers, Ali is wearing pajama pants and a shirt. I’m wearing just boxers and a t-shirt, and it feels comfortable to me in here.

“Geeze, it’s just a question.”

“Look, if you want to talk, turn up the heat.”

Grumbling, I get up and punch the heat up from 69 to 75. “There, happy?”

The fennec has closed his eyes and opens them. “Once it warms up, yeah.”

I take a deep breath. “I went tonight, and I dunno. I don’t know if it’s going to help. I feel like I’m just a shade of who I used to be, and no one sees me for me anymore. All I’m doing is going through the motions and I’m just lost—”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa! Let’s put some brakes on the depression train here!” the fennec barks. “We are not going down this road again. You keep this up and I will find a new roommate. Those people are there to help you; let them do that.”

“So, it does bother you we live together then?”

The fennec sighs and props himself up. “No, no it doesn’t, but I can’t constantly support you if you won’t try and support yourself.”

“But—”

“John, I’ve walked in here twice this academic year to find you lying on the floor comatose or bleeding. The RA told me after the first time, I can get a private room for the rest of the year if I want to, but I knew that would only make it worse for you.”

My ears fall, and I look down at my bandaged arm. “Sorry, I just feel overwhelmed at times.”

“Well, isn’t that what the weekly group meet is for? You need to start the healing process.”

I shrug. “I guess, but I don’t really know what to say there.”

“It takes time to develop trust.”

“I don’t have time, Ali. I graduate next year. Then I have to get a job, and hopefully they have good insurance, or I have to stay on Ryan White.”

“Hey, hey, one thing at time,” says the fox. “I’ve got to figure out graduation myself also.”

“You aren’t going home?”

“Maybe. Maybe grad school, but even with that, I have to eventually decide if I go home or not.”

“I thought you always wanted to go home. You hate Minnesota.”

He shrugs. “I’m not a fan of the weather, but there is more to this country than just Minnesota. I could always go to some place like Arizona.”

“Arizona is hot.”

“Yeah, and?” replies Ali.

“I guess it makes sense for you.”

“So, what do you want to do post-graduation?”

At some point I have unconsciously flicked my tail into my lap and have started playing with it. “I haven’t given it much thought. I kind of figured that was all moot now.”

“You’re still undetectable, aren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“As long as you take the meds regularly, it will stay that way. This doesn’t have to be a death sentence for you.”

“I know that. My doctor tells me that, but it doesn’t feel like that. This affects everything I do. Everything has just become harder now. I’m barely legal drinking age and already my life is over. Every day is a fight to survive.”

“It will get better.”

“Does it though? Does it really? Isn’t that a lie we tell ourselves and other people just so they can keep going through the motions?” I cradle my head in my hands. “This, unlike my scars, is never going to heal. I keep thinking I can feel the virus slowly eating through my body.”

Ali doesn’t say anything immediately, so I continue. “I’d take antidepressants, but they don’t fix me. Sure. I’m not depressed when I’m on them, but I don’t feel anything at all then. I can’t focus when I am on them. I just kind of drift through the days.”

The fox speaks up. “A man does not cross a great desert without first setting out.”

“Is that an old fennec proverb?”

“Kind of.” He jumps down from the top bunk. “Ah, warmth.”

It’s gotten warmer for sure. “You’d keep it 80 in here if I let you.”

“You don’t know how jealous of your multilayered fur I am this time of year.” Ali goes over to his desk and pulls out an orange box that contains halva his parents recently sent him. “Do you want some?” he asks me, opening the package, breaking off a piece and offering it to me.

“Sure,” I reply, accepting a piece of halva. I pop it into my muzzle and chew, letting the sesame and nut flavors play over my tongue.

“If it wasn’t so late, I’d make tea,” remarks Ali, breaking off his own piece.

My ears spray. “Sorry that I’m keeping you up.”

He shrugs. “We are both outsiders in our own ways.”

That’s true. We’re also the only juniors living together on the floor. Everyone else are freshman except for some of the guys in single occupancy rooms. On the girl’s side of the floor, there are a few upper-class students sharing rooms.

“How did you do it?”

His big ears perk. “Do what?”

“Adjust so well to America.”

He laughs. “I’ve adjusted well? I spent most of the first semester screaming internally.”

I blink surprised. “You never showed it.”

“If you keep your ears up, no one will ever guess you’re living in utter terror. I did spend a summer in England before university. That might have helped with the initial shock, but it’s still a strange place to me.”

“Well, I applaud your adaptability. I wish I could find that strength.”

“You came out to your parents, you’ve at times been ostracized for being gay, and you had to face a potentially debilitating medical condition while battling crippling depression. It makes what I went through seem easy and trivial in a way. I had only to file paperwork and wait to be approved for a student visa.”

“I know some people look at you weird since you are a fennec.”

He shrugs. “Same thing since you are a snow leopard. We get through it.”

“Mmm… I guess.”

“So, pride meeting tomorrow night?”

“Are you actually going to come?”

He chuckles. “You know I’m only bi curious.”

“We can always use allies you know, but that’s an even better reason to come. Maybe you’ll meet someone who can help settle that for you.”

“Maybe I have already.”

My ears perk. “Really?”

The fennec smiles. “Maybe I haven’t.”

I roll my eyes.

“It’s a process, I mean. Why, you interested?”

“No.” I honestly haven’t thought about dating someone. Even with the antiviral treatment and using protection, I’d still worry anyone I slept with would be putting themselves at risk, but Ali? To find out Ali had tested positive, I think I’d lose it. I couldn’t bear to see Ali suffer like this.

He doesn’t say anything, but reaches for another piece of halva. “Well, it will depend on the right person I think, but I’ll be at tomorrow’s meeting. Now are you going to bed or are you going to stare at a blank computer screen all night, until your eyes bleed onto the keys?”

I close the screen and put my orange notebook on top of the computer. I can stay up and pretend I’m going to get it done, but I know it’s not going to happen tonight. “I might as well, but can we turn down the heat? I’m dying in here.” My shirt has started to feel stifling.

“How about halfway?” suggests the fennec climbing up to the top bunk.

“Sure.” Living with someone is all about compromise.

* * *

Standing in the yellow morning light streaming in through the large glass windows, the sign taunts me, a piece of darkness on my bright, sunny new day. I didn’t think it had been there yesterday when I passed by on the way up to the room, but it is here today on the bulletin board inside the dorm’s atrium. It’s different from the one yesterday. This one has a two frat guys in black and white, each with a girl, one a wolf couple the other a lion couple. The guys look toned and the women look like they belong in a sorority. At the bottom it declares, “Straight Pride, Friday the 8th, at Wing Tavern, Starting @ 6 PM.”

Just what I need, another reminder that I’m not normal. Someone is definitely promoting this. Do they expect we’re just going to take this? That gays are here for kicking?

They’re wrong. I’m not going to take this crap. I reach up and carefully take down the sign, folding it up and shove it in my backpack to show at tonight’s Pride Student Union meeting.

“Hey! Why are you doing to my sign!”

I glance to the left, and across the atrium comes over a guy, the lion from the picture. He’s got a stack of flyers and a stapler, and was putting up more across the atrium.

“I took it down.”

“Why? You got a problem with being straight?”

“I don’t, but as one of those homos you are trying to steal their identity from, you don’t need this.”

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, nobody is stealing anything, bro.”

My large tail lashes. “Pride is our thing. It’s not a straight thing.”

“Are you saying we can’t have pride in who we are?”

“Of course not, but it’s not about that—”

“No bro, it’s exactly about that. We’re celebrating who we are.”

“No one is trying to take who you are away from you. No one is going to fire you for being straight or give you dirty looks for walking into their business with your partner. That still happens to us.”

“Yeah, but that’s not what this is about. You get a day, we get a day.”

I growl. “Every day is straight pride day.”

“No, it’s not. It’s going to be this Friday.”

I take a deep breath. “Every day of the year, you get to celebrate your marriage anniversaries and your identity simply by being the dominant form of sexuality in the world and in the media. For us, pride is our chance to come together and to celebrate as a group.”

“Stop being so sensitive. It’s just one day.”

I blink at the lion in disbelief. Isn’t part of the entire reason for having a straight pride event because the gays have their own day? He just tried to marginalize my marginalization concerns. “Do you even listen to yourself?”

“Yeah, all the time,” he brushes past me and staples another flyer against the bulletin board. “Now, leave my sign alone and get out of here, bro.”

“I live here!”

“Fine, but leave the sign.” He walks off.

I watch as he disappears and then I reach up and rip the new sign down with a growl. “No,” I declare to the sunlit atrium.

A few other students look at me weird, but no one else says anything. I wait till my blood stops pounding in my ears and then collect all the signs he put up in the dorm atrium. A quick chat with the student manning the front desk about these, and I’m off to my first class. Tonight’s pride meeting is going be interesting to say the least. Life lately has felt like it’s keeps pilling more and more adversity on top of me. It is time to fight back.

* * *

“If you constantly demonize a majority, they eventually will think they’re a minority.”

I grip my paws into fists, feeling the retractable claws dig into my pads. “Over ninety percent of the country is straight!”

“I’m not telling you it’s right, John, I’m just telling you what can happen,” Destiny, one of the board members for the Pride Student Union, is still sitting, but I’m standing in the center of the meeting room practically growling. The grey fox is looking at me tiredly. “We need to make sure we don’t use language that makes straights feel threatened.”

“Bullshit! We need to get up in their face and remind them we’re worth existing.” I snarl. The green walls of the meeting room are usually calming, but I feel like they’re another reminder of how off kilter this meeting is turning.

“That’s exactly what the gay rights movement has been doing for decades,” one of the other board members remarks, a wolf name Beryl, who sports a hooped earing on each of his ears. “Now we get to compete against our own ideas,” he adds.

“At this rate, we’re going to be regulated to LGBT awareness days.” I quip.

“You do know those are a real thing, right?” the wolf asks me.

I blink. “It is?”

Beryl clears his throat. “Yes, now if we could get this meeting back in order—”

“I’m not leaving until we decide to do something about this.”

The wolf sighs. “And do you have a proposal?”

“We protest.”

“Outside of a second-rate wing joint, in the snow, at night?” Destiny asks.

“It’s something at least. Better than sitting around.”

The wolf clears his throat. “Look, I know you’re upset, but change takes time. It doesn’t happen overnight, and I’d argue as a movement, we’ve been rather successful.”

I grit my teeth. “And we can keep succeeding, but we need to do our part to help the greater cause.”

“And after that?” responds the wolf.

I’m not sure what he’s asking about. “We’ll figure it out I guess.”

“One protest doesn’t change much, if anything. You have to keep that energy going,” chimes in Destiny.

I sigh and go to sit back down in the back of the room next to Ali who gives me an apologetic look. “We should at least respond,” I mutter.

Beryl clears his throat. “The board will think of a way to proceed.”

“I think John, is right. More and more we’re being expected to go back to being quiet. They want us back in the closet.” A weasel I recognize but don’t know well speaks up. She looks very unhappy about the fliers sitting in front of the board members.

“Yeah, but we aren’t going back into the closet,” responds someone else. “We’re just as part of the natural world as they are.”

Lord, now we’re going to argue about this and no decision is going to be made. I can feel the air in my sails slowly being let out as I sit there and listen to this.

The wolf leans forward. “We will, I promise. We’ll take this to university staff. It’s the mission of the university to support a vibrant and diverse environment.”

“This is like when we accidently ordered our fliers in black in white,” quips the weasel.

“That’s it!” I stand back up.

“That’s what?” asks Beryl.

“Straight pride is about taking the diversity out of love and saying it’s just one way. It’s a monochromatic rainbow. We should send them a black and white rainbow flag.”

The wolf looks at Destiny. “That’s not a bad idea actually.

The grey fox looks back at him. “The flag looks silly in black and white.”

“Isn’t that the point?” he asks.

“While we can try and give them a flag, that doesn’t mean they’re going to take it,” says the third board members, a racoon who has been quiet so far. As a grad student, Dustin doesn’t have a lot time like he used to, but he’s served on the board the longest.

A random voice speaks up. “Maybe not, but we should try. Plus, we can all dress in black for this.”

A few people murmur. There are about twenty-five students in the room today, a cacophony of different species gathered in the small green meeting room. We don’t always agree, but I can tell when an idea resonates with everyone, and this is starting to gain some traction. People are nodding their approval.

The racoon speaks up again. “Look, I don’t want anyone to get arrested for this. Wing Tavern is a private establishment, so they could easily ask us to leave, but I like it. I think it lets us do something constructive.”

Beryl and Destiny look at Dustin.

“Motion to hold a protest on Friday?” he asks them.

Most of the hands go up in the room including mine. Dustin raises his, followed by Beryl and Destiny. 

“Can I vote even though I almost never come?” Ali whispers to me.

“Yeah,” I say, and he raises his hand.

Dustin takes a quick count. “Looks like almost everyone is for it. The motion passes,” he says. “Now, who knows how to sew?”

* * *

The clear blue winter’s day has already faded into night by the time I reach the restaurant. The Wing Tavern is a plain looking restaurant across from campus whose parking lot is usually no more than half full. Tonight, it looks busy, but there are still a few spaces in the back. I’m wearing a black sport coat over an oxford shirt and a pair of tailored blue jeans. A group of us are waiting on the sidewalk just in front of the restaurant. Next to me is Ali, wearing a black sweater and pants. The wind blows, picking up some loose snow and depositing it on me.

“If I get sick from standing out here too long, I’m going to blame you because this was your idea” he remarks, stamping a foot. The fox looks miserable out here, but we’re waiting for more Pride Student Union members to arrive.

“Yeah,” I reply. It sounded good to me at least when I proposed it Tuesday. We’ve had to scramble to put this together. Now it is showtime.

A few minutes later, a beat-up blue sedan pulls up and Beryl gets out with Destiny and two twin cheetahs I see at the meetings by the names of Donny and Danny.

“So, did you all read Dustin’s guidance from this? He wanted to make sure since he couldn’t make it that everyone knows if they ask us to leave, we have to leave.” Destiny asks.

Everyone nods.

“We’ve thought about this, and we want everyone to wear a rainbow pin. We’re not trying to hide who we are. We’re just parodying them parodying us,” says Beryl, handing them out.

After everyone has put their pins on, and they’re visible, the wolf nods satisfied. “Color guard, unfurl the flag!” Now for the moment of truth.

The two cheetahs holding the flag step forward, one holds the pole level and turns it while the other pulls back the flag. Then when they’re done, they lift it up.

Six bars of different shades of gray fabric flap in the breeze. As a group we had to make this by hand, and I know some stayed up last night finishing it. Stitched onto it, with fabric letters on each side, it says, “STRAIGHT PRIDE” and below that, “THE BORING RAINBOW” Everyone stares at it.

“I want to say I’m disgusted, but it fits perfectly,” remarks Destiny. “Everyone really knocked it out of the park on this.”

There is a murmur of agreement.

“Okay,” says Beryl, “let’s form up and show them we won’t stand for this. Destiny and I will enter first, followed by John with the flag.”

“Me?” I say surprised.

“It was your idea.”

“Sure.” I take the flag and we form into a line with Ali next to me. Holding our makeshift banner, I can feel a sense of gratification in myself. Even if this doesn’t change anyone’s mind, I need this. I want to be a more active participant in my own life, and this is my chance.

If anyone inside the Wing Tavern has noticed what’s going on outside no one has come out yet. The place looks calm and serene. When we’re ready, we follow Destiny and Beryl across the parking lot and into the restaurant. Ali holds the door, and I wrestle the home-made flag through it. Thankfully the pole is about my height.

The Wing Tavern is a typical sports pub with a bar, and a seating area. As I walk in, I can see the hostess is already wringing her hands with Beryl and Destiny. The wolf manning the podium does not look happy to see us.

“We’re here for the Straight Pride event,” says Destiny.

The hostess looks at the flag I’m holding. “I told my manager this was a bad idea.”

“Well, at least someone here thought this through,” says Beryl.

I keep walking past the hostess stand. It’s time to raise a little hell. It’s pretty obvious where the event is. A group of college students are milling around the bar. Most of them are guys, with a few women floating about. I can see the lion who was hanging up signs in my dorm there. Ali, and some of the pride members follow behind me.

People are turning towards me as I approach and pointing. There are about forty students all told that seem to be part of the event. The lion sees me, and looks up at the flag.

“Hey, you can’t bring that in here!” he says, coming up to confront me.

“This is a gift for you.” I say.

His eyes flash anger at me. “Not cool, bro.”

“It’s just one flag,” I say planting the flag next to me, holding it so the flag drapes down.

“Get that shit out of here!” he snarls at me.

“As you told me, stop being so sensitive.”

His face twists and he steps forward. “Go home fag, or I’ll—”

I hiss. “You’ll what, attack me? Go ahead. I dare you.”

The lion gives me a look that screams daggers. “Is that what you want?” he asks with menace in his voice. “Probably the only time you feel like a man is when someone is kicking your ass.”

In that moment I want to take the flag pole in my hands and plant it into his chest, and leave him there. I take a deep breath. I will only make it worse.

“No, but I am sure that’s when you feel like a man.”

I see him tense. I see him make a fist, but I don’t flinch. I’m already broken, there is nothing he can do to me here that is worse than what I’m dealing with now.

“You think you are funny?” he says, jabbing a finger into my chest. “I can show you funny!”

Before I can respond, the hostess comes up growling and gets between us. Beryl and Destiny have followed the hostess over to the bar. “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“He start—” I start to say.

“Don’t care,” the wolf barks.

Right, if they ask us to leave, we need to go. Ali is next to me and gently tugs at my shirt. “Fine,” I say turning around. We realized we’d likely have to protest outside.

As I’m walking away, the lion speaks up again. “Yeah, run home-”

“You too,” barks the wolf. “I want all of you gone. This entire event was a mistake.”

“Hey, you can’t throw me out!” protests the lion.

The entire Pride Student Union comes to a stop. Beryl and Destiny are still next to the hostess

“Yes, I can. You were shouting and looked like you were about ready to hit him, and that’s good enough for me. Now, either you walk out of here on your own, or I’ll call the cops on you for disturbing the peace.”

He snarls over the wolf. “You fags and dykes have ruined straight pride!”

Ali laughs next to me. “See that’s your issue. Pride, is all about fags and dykes.”

* * *

The therapy group is talking quietly among themselves when I walk into the room wearing a violet shirt. My spirit feels somewhat lifted since last week, and I’ve been reliving Friday’s protest over in my mind. So far, things have been going well. I broke down crying last night, but I managed to push back my demons. I’m still not sure how I’m going to work out some of the issues I’m facing, but there was something about Friday. Something hopeful about what we did.

“All right,” Clarissa says when we’re all seated. “Glad to see you all here today. Does anyone have anything they want to share before we start?”

I raise my hand, and the fox looks at me surprised. She smiles.

“Yes, John?”

I stand up, and all eyes in the room focus on me, watching carefully.

“I think my life is a mess, but last week I saw something that made me angry. It wasn’t easy, but I stood up and did something proactive about it.”

“That’s good,” says Clarissa. “Being proactive is always good.”

Doug, the tiger speaks up. “What was it?”

I take a deep breath. “A local group was hosting a straight pride event, and for some reason it clicked. I couldn’t be invisible any longer. I needed to do something, but I wasn’t sure what. I brought the issue to the Pride Student Union, and I helped rally them to protest the event.”

There is a murmur in the room, and I sit back down. That felt good to say.

The red fox is silent for a minute before she speaks up. “How did that make you feel?”

“Empowered,” I respond, and then after letting the word hang out there, “and alive again,” I add.